There are a lot of ways to strengthen a brand or business online in this digital world and running social media contests is one of them. Due to the fewer organic reach on different social media sites including Facebook, running a contest can help you boost your brand without breaking the bank.

If you also want to strengthen social media presence of your brand but not sure how to start, then go through the article to discover proven tips for planning and running successful social media contests to keep your existing and potential customers engaged with a little marketing budget.

Know Exactly what you Want

Knowing exactly what you want helps you plan the contests in a great way. Do you want more newsletter sign ups, introduce a new product/services or just want to increase brand recognition? Having clear goals in mind allows you to plan the contest for desired outcomes. Social media contest goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable and time bound) to get most from your endeavors.

Set your Budget

Once you have clear goals in mind, set up a budget plan to run the contest accordingly. For setting up a budget you need to consider things like prize for winners, content creation costs (if any), promotion cost, cost of third-party giveaway app and any other external service you are about to use etc. It will give you an exact figure you need to create and run your social media contest without getting out of the way.

Choose the Type of Contest

Selection of the right type of contest according to your goals can help you gain the desired outcomes. Contests like sweepstakes are easy to enter and come with lesser barriers to enter. In results, you can get a huge number of entrants. Photo or video contests are little bit harder but end up with higher rate of engagement. You must choose the perfect type of contest to get most from your efforts.

Decide the Length of Contest

Having several rounds of photo contest can help you reach your goals effectively along with a big number of new followers and higher rate of engagement. That’s why, it is important to decide that how many days the contest will be running. If there is a low marketing budget with an intention to get more engagement, then you can run one-day exciting contests to spur more engagement without going out of budget.

Choose the Right Tools

Decide a suitable social media platform to run your contest and be sure to use external tools like Facebook contest app to streamline the process in a best possible way. Choose one apt social media platform for running contests and stick to that for optimum results. Third-party social media contest apps and tools can help you do several messy and time-consuming jobs conveniently to run the contest efficiently. Some of the contest apps offer personalization options and features that make the sharing of contest easier and effective. With a personalized contest URL, you can attract more participants by sharing the URL via different offline marketing tactics. It is also a great way to strengthen brand awareness and recognition.